Deadpool & Wolverine

Despite Claws and Swords, Not Much of a Point

or

"Get Your Special Sock Out, Nerds — This is Going to Be Good."

It was as inevitable as the title "When Titans Clash" showing up in any Marvel comic. 

 

Around the time that X-men Origins: Wolverine was being conceived, Ryan Reynolds lobbied hard to play the character Deadpool—"The Merc with a Mouth"—a comic super-powered mercenary with regenerative powers and a meta-influenced line of snarky patter that quickly made him a fan favorite from "The House of Ideas." It would have been a nice break-through role for Reynolds (as the man can be funny...and irreverent...as hell), but, for some reason the character was revised for the movie—his mouth was fused together, therefore couldn't speak. 

 

Well, what fun was that? They wouldn't even let him make guttural sounds—which would have been funny if they'd had him trying to say words like he was perpetually eating peanut butter—But, no, "they" wouldn't even allow that. It was Wolverine's movie, Wolverine was—and always was, even in the comics—the breakout character in the "X-men" series, so Deadpool was muted, lest he actually upstage the titular character of the film.*

Ryan Reynolds on "Mute" during X-men Origins: Wolverine.

X-men Origins: Wolverine did okay at the box-office—but not enough to generate any more "X-men Origins" movies. It did generate some animus with Reynolds, who'd been trying to get a "Deadpool" movie into production** and thought X-MO:W killed it and killed it dead. Silly man. Deadpool, after all, has regenerative powers—shoot him and the bullet will work its way out, cut his arm off and it'll grow back—so after having a proposed budget slashed and a rather kicking "sizzle" reel made, the film was made and did blockbuster box-office. It also slightly regenerated the "superhero" genre of films which, at the time, was starting to lose its buy-back value.

Deadpool had no shame in its humor, lampooning superheroes, superhero movies, Marvel, DC, Reynolds, and 20th Century Fox, but seemed to take particular hyena-glee when making fun of Hugh Jackman and X-men Origins: Wolverine, setting my movie-blogger sense tingling about a possible collaboration between the two. It seemed inevitable.

Happily, it's happened in Deadpool & Wolverine, which, after a rather moribund effort with Deadpool 2, has revived the series a few deep-cut notches above its predecessor. The (this time unfunnily not written by Reynolds) synopsis goes like this:

"A listless Wade Wilson toils away in civilian life with his days as the morally flexible mercenary, Deadpool, behind him. But when his home-world faces an existential threat, Wade must reluctantly suit-up again with an even more reluctant Wolverine."

Um. Sure. That's sounds..."listless", but serviceable. But, it doesn't really talk about what's happened since the last movie, of which the most important event is that Disney bought 20th Century Fox, home of the X-men franchise, as well as Marvel Studios, which has everybody else, so that The House of Mouse can claim all things Marvel and wait for the money-truck to drive up to the receiving dock. The movie is rife with opportunity to make all sorts of in-jokes on that subject including using the old corporate logo in a Cosmic Garbage Dump called "The Void".

"Welcome to the MCU," Deadpool says at one point. "You're joining at a bit of a low point."

 

(Now, bear in mind this will be confusing) What happens is that Deadpool has been using the time-dimensional device of the Marvel mercenary Cable*** to go back in time and try to fix things to get his girlfriend (Morena Baccarin) back, right? Well, things aren't going too well on that front, so he goes to another Marvel Earth ("The Sacred Timeline" one) to join the Avengers (with just the first of many cameo's), but he's turned down...flat. But, his time-hopping has attracted the attention of the TVA (the Time Variance Authority), and its agent Mr. Paradox (Matthew Macfadyen), who informs Deadpool that his timeline is starting to unravel owing to the fact that its "anchor being", Wolverine has died (because of Logan). Paradox makes Deadpool the opportunity to be put in "The Sacred Timeline" to spare his life and help with future events.

Wade, wanting to spare his ex and friends from extinction decides he'll do something else (naturally). He transports himself to the spot where the Wolverine died, digs up his grave and finds...a metallic corpse. Not very useful to preserving the timeline, but the parts come in handy in a fight when TVA troops arrive to try and stop him. So, the next step is to find another Wolverine...a "live" one this time...so he goes multiverse-hopping to find a suitable Wolverine—there are some lovely variants, including a comics-accurate version (funny!) and one cameo by a super-hero actor in need a of a job (blink and you'll miss him), until, finally, he finds a "suitable" Wolverine.

Taking him back to the TVA, he discovers that not all adamantium-encrusted Canadian super-heroes are alike, and is told he's brought back "the worst" Wolverine (owing to a failure in his past), Paradox whisks them off to "The Void" (from the Disney series "Loki")—the place at the end of time where discarded super-heroes go to await disposal. Lots of interesting cameo's here (see the picture below for some), but the place is lorded over by Charles Xavier's twin sister Cassandra Nova (played—and quite entertainingly—by Emma Corrin) who has her brother's head-messing-with powers and is (to put it kindly) "resentful."

Just some of the "discarded" heroes in "The Void"

There are so many "in-jokes" and references to past Marvel movies "before they were popular" that some audience-members may get lost in the mix. One merely has to "go with it" as Deadpool's running snarkiness will be providing references and laughs all along the way. Besides, there are so many variants of characters in the Void—there's a "Dogpool" portrayed by Peggy, the recently crowned "Britain's Ugliest Dog"—that details really don't matter, as something funny will be said in the next 30 seconds, anyway.

This, of course, is the film's strength—along with the R-rated "evisceration humor" exhibited in the fights (nobody gets hurt with these regenerative powers, so they're as impactful as injuries in a "Looney Tunes" cartoon)—so much so that the story really doesn't matter. At all. It's all played for laughs, and if the film twists itself in gordian knots trying to generate plot-points, it's going to become a punch-line anyway—maybe because of the lengths the writers have to go through to get there. The Deadpool series has its own wall of incredulity to run interference on "the Plausibles" in the audience trying to see plot-holes in the movie as that's the character of Deadpool himself. He's a one-man "Mystery Science Theater," poking holes (often literally) in everything.

Cassandra Nova's "headquarters" is the corpse of Ant-Man/Giant-Man

Deadpool's comment: "Huh. Paul Rudd finally aged..." 

I guess the poor box-office of Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania had ramifications.

But, then, nobody really cared what happened to Hope and Crosby after each "Road" movie, or to the Marx Brothers, or Laurel and Hardy. People just came for the laughs. So let it be with Deadpool. And if things in the movie end merely to the default state at the beginning, at least it insures that another one will come along after awhile, that's okay, too. That's entertainment. Sometimes you have to let go of the continuity consciousness and not expect transformative story-lines and major changes to the characters, as long as they're having a good time and taking us along with them.

 

Now, that's a real regenerative power.

* Never mind that the scenario might have spawned another movie tent-pole series with Deadpool—a pretty good bet in hindsight because that is exactly what happened, due to Ryan Reynolds' persistence.

 

** Reynolds loved the comic, especially when it described Wade Wilson as looking like "a cross between Ryan Reynolds and a Shar Pei." 

 

*** Cable was in Deadpool 2...you know...played by Josh Brolin (No, not Thanos...the other...*siiigh*...(this is going to take a long time...) Look, just go with it, okay? You probably don't believe in multi-verses anyway! ("Did you know Dr. Dre's "Nothing but a 'G' Thang" has the most verses?") That's NOT what I'm talkin....just keep reading, okay? No more questions.

Free Guy

BFD for the NPC

or

Thumb-Twitching at the Movies

 

Guy (Ryan Reynolds) wakes up every morning, feeds his fish ("Good morning, Goldie!"), pulls out his usual outfit—short-sleeved blue shirt, khakis—from a closet full of short-sleeved blue shirts and khakis, brushes his teeth, eats breakfasts, grabs a coffee (medium coffee, cream, two sugars) and goes to his job as a bank teller ("Don't have a good day. Have a great day!")...which will be robbed...every day. Without fail.

 

Oh, I didn't mention the commute.

 

Guy lives in Free City, which is a video-game. Walking to work, he is constantly witness to all sorts of disasters, natural and unnatural, none of which can kill him if he's on his normal route to the bank. He is an NPC—a non-playing character, an extra, a background figure. He's coded, but he's robotic. Unless something hits him and kills him, he's going to do the same thing, go the same route, be the same Guy, a nobody, a drone, a cog, a non-essential worker.

And I know how he feels.

Guy's a part of the landscape, but Free City is constantly invaded by the muckery inflicted by real-world players, all represented by avatars wearing sunglasses. The chaos they cause is just part of the routine, until Guy notices a woman (Jodie Comer) walking down the street, bopping to the Mariah Carey song "Fantasy" which he recognizes. Why, you may ask? Well, that would be spoilery (and, frankly, a little unbelievable—but, go with it). He's intrigued by her, wants to know who she is, and inspires him to don player sun-glasses he's acquired from one of the bank-heist perps.

What he finds is a real-player's perspective of his world—pixelated mind blown! He is made aware of an entirely new world in which he is not merely a part, but could become a participant; he has some measure of control and he knows that the woman—named "Molotovgirl"—is somehow involved. So, he must find her, and find out what he needs to know to become the master of his own fate.

Tough work. But, the cast—especially in the Free City sections—makes it enjoyable. Because that whole area is a fantasy and anything can happen (including cameos) there are surprises and Easter eggs galore, plus it has Ryan Reynolds at his most winsome. The movie is more of a slog out in the real world where the issues are creative rights over code rather than self-actualization, and despite the best efforts of these actors—Taika Waititi tries damned hard for laughs and Comer's real-life programmer Millie has less jolt than Molotovgirl—these sections of the film must be endured, rather than enjoyed.

Of course, you've seen it before...and better. The "Simulation Hypothesis" has been around since people decided they liked their dreams better than being awake. The trope was used in a lot of "Twilight Zone's" and other sci-fi/fantasy product like Rainer Werner Fassbinder's World on a Wire, the "Men in Black" series, The Matrix (of course) and Ready Player One. One of my favorite instances was in an episode of "Star Trek: The Next Generation"—"Ship in a Bottle"—where, after trapping a hologram of Professor Moriarty in a small cube version of a holo-suite, Captain Picard muses "Who knows? Our reality may be very much like theirs, and all this might just be an elaborate simulation, running inside a little device sitting on someone's table." 

 

Just so.

The concept is so fascinating that real-world people can abandon their limited lives to immerse themselves in the video-worlds to imagine themselves as better versions (in the things they admire—like kill-ratios) while their biological clock is ticking down, all in the quest of earning more imaginary lives. Video games are the crypto-currency in our biological banking system. But, do they value their psuedo-lives more? Than their actual lives? Results may vary.  I sense a screenplay synopsis coming on.

For me, I don't play video games anymore. I find them a waste of my dwindling time here on Earth. So, I didn't "geek" over Free Guy, a lot of the inside referenced going right over my head. But, I enjoyed enough of it that I didn't care—and the movie plays well enough without insider knowledge. I also liked the fact that I got to watch it on free HBO while staying in a hotel in Oregon, a way to pass the time where I didn't "want those two hours of my life back"—real or virtually.